Ok so this might sound like a weird question but recently my family has been trying to think of ways that we could keep Loki active mentally. He's supposed to be an unusually smart breed and he really doesn't have much to keep him thinking on a regular basis and we can tell he's getting bored. Can anyone suggest something like a puzzle or game or something that wouldn't necessarily require physical activity but would make him use his brain more?

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That's the thing though is we can't do that with him because of his leg injuries. He gets good exercise with swimming and it doesn't hurt his leg, but when we try to run him around on hard ground it stresses him out too much and he starts to limp.

Something I do with Ice is a version of the old 3 card monty.

Needed:
Favorite treat
Three cups.

Take the treat and put it under one of the cups, then move the cups around and let the dog try to find it. If they guess wrong on the first one, pick the cup up and shuffle some more.

That would be perfect! Thanks! Anyone else with other ideas would be great, he'll probably learn the trick to one fairly quickly.

I've heard a lot of people love "101 Things To Do With A Box". Not sure if it's something you have buy/subscribe to but I think it's on Karen Pryor's website if you register. Ahh, Google... 101 Things to do with a box

Another thing you can do is hide a bunch of hot dog chunks around the yard and then let him out. I foolishly tried this inside before. Don't do that, it might create a constantly treat hunting dog that gets into things.

The ideas aren't flowing very well tonight. I'm sure something else will pop into my head tomorrow. You threw a spanner in the works with his leg issues. ¿How long can he be comfortably active if it's just playing around the house?

If he's just playing around he doesn't tend to have a problem, but whenever we throw a ball for him outside without water he always has to get to the ball as fast as possible and get back to us as fast as possible, and all of that starting and stopping overstresses him. We have noticed a huge improvement since he's started swimming on a regular basis, but it's still not very mentally-challenging, and he really needs something like that.